Page 86 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

Reformasi 71

Suharto’s daughter. Bisnis Indonesia reported on the cancellation of four contracts for
port services held by Suharto’s son.
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Even on television, still controlled by Suharto’s children and cronies, little was
off-limits. After Habibie’s speech promising new elections, a televised panel featured
an opposition candidate delivering a stinging critique inconceivable under Suharto.
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Producers on TPI (Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia), owned by Suharto’s daughter,
began airing exposés, including one on the pacification of the province of Aceh show-
ing graphic footage of military atrocities.
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Publications and radio programs shut down under Suharto now resurfaced in new
forms. Tempo magazine, “consigned to the glorious dustbin of history” just two years
earlier, resumed publication in August 1998. The banned weekly tabloid Dë TIK also
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started up again as Dë TAK and quickly reestablished itself as a leader in both cir-
culation and temerity. Canceled broadcast programs resurfaced in forms far bolder
than the originals. At the vanguard of what one announcer dubbed “reformasi radio,”
Safari-FM launched the radical call-in show Wacana Jakarta ( Jakarta Discourse ) featur-
ing Ahmad Taufik, one of the AJI activists jailed in 1994, as a host. Safari-FM’s pro-
gram director, Nor Pud Binarto, launched the show believing in radio’s revolutionary
potential and its power to defend the media’s new freedoms. Binarto’s earlier cutting-
edge show, Jakarta Round-Up , had been canceled after guest Goenawan Mohamad
condemned the government for banning his magazine Tempo . Now Wacana Jakarta
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regularly went much further, covering everything from the army’s role in politics to
ethnic and religious conflicts.
Uncensored debate also became a staple of television programming. Talk shows
resembling CNN’s Crossfire multiplied, and several earned higher ratings than even
the most popular sinetron soap operas. Wimar Witoelar, whose show Perspektif had

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been canceled in 1995, launched two new television talk shows, Selayang Pandang and
the more controversial Dialog Aktual on rival station Indosiar. Pro dan Kontra on TPI
facilitated combative one-on-one debates. One of the most innovative shows, TPI’s
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Dialog Partai Partai , featured unscripted debates between politicians before a live stu-
dio audience of outspoken university students.
With the end of mandatory membership in government-sponsored professional
organizations, more than twenty new media associations formed within a year. Some
claimed to represent the interests of all media workers, while others focused on
groups such as photographers and television journalists. In 1999, several also joined
the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, a coalition of journalist organizations from coun-
tries throughout the region that was created to “demonstrate that press freedom is a
universal value.”
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Early Threats
President Habibie, the center of the controversy that precipitated the 1994 press
bans, expressed pride in his administration’s liberalizing role. When the media fea-
tured student calls for his resignation, he appeared committed to freedom of speech,
at one point thanking the students for their contribution to reform. Speaking before

a language conference, he urged government officials to reform their use of Bahasa
Indonesia, the national language, to promote more transparent governance.
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These words, however, followed moves to circumscribe the media’s new freedom.
In July 1998, only a month after his information minister had relaxed business licens-
ing, Habibie proposed that journalists be required to obtain renewable professional